In our post The secret of Benghazi we listed questions that need to be asked and answered about the murderous attack on the American mission, but there was one question we omitted, perhaps the most important of all. Robert Klein Engler supplied it in a comment which we think needs to be put on our front page. It entails other, related, questions:

Many who have looked into the Incident at Benghazi are disappointed in the congressional investigation so far. The most important question that needs to be asked and answered is, “Who gave the order to ‘stand down’ at Benghazi?” Once that question is answered, the rest of what went on there will fall into place. “According to a Fox News report by Jennifer Griffin, former Navy Seals Ty Woods and Glen Doherty…were ordered to stand down three times following calls during the attack. The first two times occurred soon after they heard initial shots fired…and (they) requested permission to go to the consulate to help out…(Forbes).” The Examiner.com claims “…former House speaker Newt Gingrich…was informed by a U. S. senator that at least two media networks have recently been given…evidence about the Sept. 11 Benghazi attacks that killed four Americans… The networks obtained e-mail evidence from…the office of National Security Advisor James Jones…ordering a counterterrorism team to cancel a rescue mission at the U. S. consulate and CIA annex in Libya. According to Gingrich…they were told explicitly by the White House ‘stand down and do nothing. This is not a terrorist action.'” If this is true, why haven’t those e-mails been made public or asked for by those investigating the Incident at Benghazi? A newspaper like the Chicago Tribune or the Washington Post has resources they can use to seek out an answer and obtain those e-mails. What if there were a robbery at your local bank? Would a reporter investigate the robbery by first flying off to New York and interviewing a senior bank manager, only to discover an adulterous relationship and then spend time reporting that? It would be better to interview the bank tellers, customers and witnesses to the robbery at the local branch first. Why hasn’t something similar been done about the Incident at Benghazi? The FBI was at Benghazi, but for only three hours. How many witnesses did they interview? What did they find out? The man who led the attack on our “mission” at Benghazi is reported giving interviews on Arabic TV! Why has no US reporter contacted him and asked him what happened? The Incident at Benghazi should not disappear off the front page of our newspapers until the stand down question is answered. We are asking the media and our elected representative for help. Tell us the truth. Who gave the order to stand down at Benghazi? If for no other reason, answer the question to set the minds of our men and women in the military service at ease. They want to be assured someone has their back.

We suspect the answer to “who gave the order?” is “the President”. And we suspect that that is why the press is not investigating the Incident at Benghazi. Most journalists now see their job as protecting the President, helping him to achieve his far-left pro-Islam agenda; not reporting to us the events we need to know about, happening now in America and the rest of the world.  

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And here is part of a highly pertinent comment on the above by our reader Liz. The question “who gave the order to ‘stand down’?” gives rise immediately to the question “why?” It had to be either given or allowed to be given by Obama.

The question should not only be who gave the order to stand down, but WHY did Obama allow it? Because no matter who gave the order, or even what the reason was, it is not a good enough reason to let four Americans die. And the responsibility for that is still Obama’s.

Liz thinks the fact that the order was given is cause to impeach the president, and we agree with her.

If Israel were to destroy every weapon stored in Gaza, it would still be in danger from that tiny, horrid, pathetic strip of what should be prime Mediterranean beach estate. Because the people who live there are so dedicated to hatred of Israel that the passion overrules all other possible interests, such as prosperity. And because more weapons will pour into Gaza almost as fast as they can be destroyed. And the new weapons will be more lethal than the old. And in any case the Israelis will not be allowed to get anywhere near to destroying all existing stocks of weapons because some pretend-truce will be forced on them by world powers of historically perfect moral purity (such as Russia, China, France, Germany …).

This is from an article by Daniel Greenfield at Canada Free Press; bitter, maybe a trifle exaggerated in spots, yet essentially true:

The military, whether in the United States or Israel, does not exist to win wars. It exists to win over the people who don’t want it to win a war. …

In Israel, the last time the military was sent to win a war, was 1973. Since then the military has been used as a police force and to battle militias in Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank. In the Territories, the ideal Israeli soldier was supposed to be able to dodge rocks thrown by teenagers hired by Time correspondents looking to score a great photo. Today the ideal Israeli soldier is capable of visiting an American college campus to dodge the overpriced textbooks hurled at him by the local branch of Students for Justice in Palestine or the International Socialist Organization, while explaining why the IDF is the most moral army in the world except for the Salvation Army.

The ideal Israeli soldier, like his American, British and Canadian, but not Russian or Chinese, counterparts, is supposed to avoid Incidents. That means operating under Rules of Engagement which make firing at an assailant almost as dangerous as not firing at an assailant.

The ideal American soldier is supposed to avoid the Taliban, or as one set of orders urged, patrol in places where the Taliban won’t be found. And that’s sensible advice, because if the goal is to avoid creating an Incident, then avoiding the enemy is the best way to avoid an Incident. Unfortunately the enemy has a bad habit of appearing where he isn’t supposed to be and creating his own Incidents, because Taliban and Hamas commanders …  actually welcome Incidents. The bigger and bloodier the Incident, the more hashish and young boys get passed around the campfire that night.

American soldiers operate under the burden of winning over the hearts and minds of Afghans and New York Times readers.

Israeli soldiers are tasked with winning over New York Times readers and European politicians.

But some hearts and minds are just unwinnable. And most wars become unwinnable when the goal is to fight an insurgency that has no fear of the dreaded Incident, while your soldiers are taught to be more afraid of an Incident than of an enemy bullet.

Israeli leaders live in perpetual fear of “losing the sympathy of the world”, little aware that they never really had it. The “Sympathy of the World” is the strategic metric for conflicts. And so Israel does its best to minimize any collateral damage by using pinpoint strikes and developing technologies that can pluck a bee off a flower without harming a single petal. But invariably the technocratic genius of such schemes has its limits, an Incident happens, the Israeli leftist press denounces the Prime Minister for clumsily losing the sympathy of the world, and international politicians order Israel to retreat back behind whatever line it retreated to during the last appeasement gesture before the last peace negotiations. And its experts ponder how to fight the next one without losing the sympathy of the world.

American and Israeli generals live in fear of losing political support and so they never put any plans on the table that would finish a conflict. Instead they choose low intensity warfare with prolonged bleeding instead of short and brutal engagements that would finish the job. They talk tough, but their enemies know that they don’t mean it. Worse still, that they aren’t allowed to mean it because meaning it would be too mean.

Incidentism leads to armies tiptoeing around conflicts and losing them by default. Avoiding them becomes the objective and that also makes Incidents inevitable because the enemy understands that all it will take to win is a few dead children planted in the ruins of a building; in a region where parents kill their own children for petty infractions and frequently go unpunished for it.

And send their children to be blown up by walking over minefields or detonating a suicide bomber’s belt.

The more an army commits to Incidentism, the sooner its war is lost. Prolonged low intensity conflicts are ripe with opportunities for Incidents, far more so that hot and rapid wars. And so the hearts and minds, those of the locals and those of New York Times readers, always end up being lost anyway.

War is no longer just politics by other means, it actually is politics with the goal of winning over hearts and minds, rather than achieving objectives. The objectives of a war, before, during and after, have become those of convincing your friends and your enemies, and various neutral parties, of your innate goodness and the justice of your cause. Propaganda then has become the whole of war and those who excel at propaganda, but aren’t any good at war, now win the wars. The actual fighting is just the awkward part that the people who make the propaganda wish we could dispense with so they can focus on what’s really important; distributing photos of our soldiers protecting the local children and playing with their puppies.

Take all that into account and the miserable track records of great armies are no longer surprising. Armies need to prove their morality to win a war, but are never allowed to win a war because it would interfere with proving their morality.  …

The war of words, the conflict of images and videos, the clash of arguments, has become the sum of war. And that war is unwinnable because it must be fought on two fronts, against the cultural enemies within and the insurgents outside. An army cannot win a war and win over the New York Times at the same time.

At PJ Media, Andrew C. McCarthy makes a well-reasoned, well-substantiated case that it is “time to move on from the GOP”. He argues that the Republican Party “is not remotely serious about implementing limited government policies or dealing with the two central challenges of our age, existentially threatening deficit spending and Islamic supremacism.” The Republicans, since they dominate the House of Representatives, have the power to solve the debt crisis but lack the will. And when it comes to opposing Obama’s pro-Islam policies, “the current crop of Republican leaders has shown no stomach for the fight”. (The whole article needs to be read.)

The Middle East … is aflame. A heavy contributing factor is the American policy of embracing and empowering the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamists allies, very much including al Qaeda. The Brotherhood is a committed enemy of the United States. … It considers the destruction of Western civilization from within to be its principal mission in the United States.

In 2011, President Obama launched an unprovoked war in Libya against the Qaddafi regime, which Republicans had been telling us for eight years had mended its ways and become an American ally – such that Republicans in Congress supported transfers of U.S. taxpayer dollars to Tripoli. Obama’s Libya war was guaranteed to put Islamists in power and put Qaddafi’s arsenal at the disposal of violent jihadists. By refusing to foot the bill, congressional Republicans could have aborted this counter-productive aggression – in the conduct of which the administration consulted the U.N. and the Arab League but not the branch of the U.S. government vested by the Constitution with the power to declare and pay for war. Instead, Republicans lined up behind their transnational progressive wing, led by Senator John McCain, which champions the chimera of sharia-democracy – McCain called the Islamists of Benghazi his “heroes.”

That pro-Islamist policy is directly responsible for the heedlessness of establishing an American consulate in Benghazi. It led to the attacks on our consulate and the British consulate, and ultimately to the terrorist murder of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya (weeks after British diplomats had the good sense to leave town).

The scandal brings into sharp relief an alarming fact that has long been obvious: notwithstanding their abhorrence of America and the West, Islamists are exerting profound influence on our government. Known Islamists and officials with undeniable Islamist connections have infiltrated the government’s policy councils; simultaneously, American policy has moved steadily in favor of Islamists – such that the government supports and funds Muslim Brotherhood affiliates that are hostile to us; colludes with these Islamists in purging from agent-training materials information demonstrating the undeniable nexus between Islamic doctrine and jihadist terror; collaborates with these Islamists in the effort to impose repressive sharia blasphemy restrictions on our free speech rights; and, we now learn, knowingly misleads the American people on the cause of murderous Islamist tirades, of which the atrocity in Benghazi is only the most recent example.

A few months back, long before these policies resulted in the killing of our American officials in Libya, and even before these policies abetted the Muslim Brotherhood takeover of Egypt … five conservative Republicans called for an investigation of Islamist influence on our government. Five members of the House – i.e., less than one percent of the Congress – was willing to stand up and confront a profound threat to American national security. The Republican establishment had the opportunity to back them, to prove that the GOP could at least be serious about a profound threat to our national security. Instead, senior Republicans – the Islamist-friendly transnational progressives to whom the party disastrously looks for foreign policy leadership – castigated the five. Speaker Boehner followed suit.

As the weeks went on, and event after event proved the five conservatives right and the apologists for Islamists wrong, the Republican establishment went mum. When the Islamist empowerment strategy coupled with the Obama administration’s shocking failure to defend Americans under siege resulted in the Benghazi massacre, the Republican establishment was given a rare gift: an opportunity, in the decisive stretch-run of a close presidential contest, to exhibit national security seriousness and distinguish themselves from Obama’s dereliction of duty. To the contrary, Gov. Romney and his top advisors decided to go mum on Benghazi; and congressional Republicans essentially delegated their response to Senators McCain and Lindsey Graham – the very “Islamic democracy” enthusiasts who had championed U.S. intervention on the side of Libyan jihadists in the first place (only after having championed the American embrace of Qaddafi).

This has to stop. The current crop of Republican leaders has shown no stomach for the fight. In fact, notwithstanding that President Obama lost a remarkable ten million votes from 2008 in his narrow reelection last week (i.e., 13 percent of his support), House Speaker John Boehner is treating him as if he has a mandate to continue his failed policies – as if the country and its representatives have no choice but to roll over on the immensely unpopular Obamacare law and concede on feeding Leviathan even more revenue and borrowing authority without deep cuts in spending … ; as if the country shares Boehner’s insouciance about the Islamist threat.

By reappointing Boehner and his leadership colleagues today, Republicans are telling us that their answer to failure is more of the same. They have a right to make that choice, but there is no reason why Americans who are serious about our challenges should follow along. The Republican establishment is content with more government, more debt, and more entanglement with our enemies. When called on it, they tell us they are powerless to stem the tide. But the problem is the lack of will and a sense of urgency, not lack of power. It is time to find a new vehicle to lead the cause of limited, fiscally responsible, constitutional government. The Republicans are telling us they are unwilling to be that vehicle. If that is the case, it is time to move on.

Can the “new vehicle” be anything but a new political party? And what could be its nucleus? The Tea Party? Not if it includes the same enfeebling component of Christians as the Republican Party does. We, of course, would like it to be secular constitutionalist, as dedicated to the cause of individual freedom as the Republican Party was dedicated at its foundation to the cause of freeing the slaves, and as willing to fight for it.

It is certain* that General David Petraeus, as head of the CIA, lied to the nation about the armed attack on the US mission in Benghazi, Libya, which resulted in the death of Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans on 9/11/12. General Petraeus has now resigned, citing an adulterous love affair – not participation in a cover-up – as a moral lapse so grievous that it renders him unfit for high office.

In our judgment – and we are always and insistently judgmental – lying to the nation is a far worse moral offense than adultery. We would like to think that General Petraeus is of the same opinion.

The Obama administration has woven a tangled web of lies about the military defeat of the United States by Arab Muslims in Libya. Now they are desperately trying to cover up not only the truth but the lies as well. Ever more tangled the web becomes. So far, two Generals and an Admiral, all men of distinction and honor (see our posts Yet more about Benghazi – but still not enough, October 31, 2012, and Admiral fired in storm over Benghazigate?, October 31, 2012), have been entangled in it and brought down. Will the incredible luck that has sustained Obama throughout his political life keep him yet again from the disgrace he deserves?

We found that our suspicions about what might be the far more scandalous truth behind General Petraeus’s resignation are shared by Paul A. Rahe, who writes at his website Ricochet:

Here is what I wonder. Did David Petraeus allow himself to be blackmailed by the minions of Barack Obama?

The testimony Petraeus gave Congress on Benghazi shortly after the assassination of our ambassador to Libya was a restatement of the patently false narrative foisted on the country by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and their underlings — to wit, that the assault on the American consulate was a spontaneous demonstration in reaction to [an anti-Islam] Youtube video.

Petraeus had to know better. The Benghazi bungle took place on the anniversary of 9/11. There was plenty of intelligence available to Petraeus prior to the event suggesting that Al Qaeda was becoming a real force in the region, and the e-mails that the CIA sent the White House at the time indicate that the folks in the agency knew within hours that the attack had been carefully planned and knew who in Benghazi was responsible.

So why did a man always known for his honor and integrity go before a Congressional committee and lie through his teeth? If Washington were Chicago, we would know the answer. Blackmail is, in Chicago, standard operating procedure. Is Washington now Chicago? Is Petraeus leaving office a disgraced and broken man because one act of dishonor and betrayal led him to commit another far more shameful?

I hope not. I greatly admire the man. … But I, nonetheless, have to ask, “Why did Petraeus lie?” And given the fact that the lie was part of a preposterous narrative being peddled by a President who knew that the truth might well be fatal to his reelection — and who depended on his lies being echoed by a pliable, servile press — I have to ask, “How did they get an honorable man to disgrace himself so utterly?”

If this line of questioning makes sense, then we have to entertain the possibility that David Petraeus is resigning because doing what he did in his testimony to Congress is distasteful in a fashion that a man of his mettle cannot long bear.

Congress should not let this pass. David Petraeus should be made to testify about Barack’s Benghazi Bungle. We have a right to know the truth. We had a right to know it well before the 6th of November. We now have a right to know why we were denied the truth.

Let’s conjecture that the Obama gang feared that the General would tell the truth when called to testify before Congressional inquiries next week. Obviously the head of the CIA is an indispensable  witness when a CIA mission was one of the targets in Benghazi and two of its men were killed. “So,” think the stoats and weasels in the White House, “let’s quickly get rid of the man who might reveal all that we’re trying to cover up – our incompetence, our callousness, our weakness, our bad judgment, our illicit dealings, our treachery – and stick another man in who will lie for us. Now on what grounds can we demand General Petraeus’s resignation? Well, there’s that love affair we know of. We’ll get him to say he’s so overcome by remorse for that he feels he must ask to be let go.”

Why does the General agree to do it? It’s another lie, even though the fact of the affair (finished some time ago) is true.  Let’s say he goes along with the new deception in order to be free to tell the truth. But will he tell the truth now as a private citizen? According to some media reports he will not be testifying before the closed-door Democrat-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee next week; the new conniving head of the CIA will be doing so in his stead.

But it is a different story with the Republican-dominated House whose inquiry into the Benghazi affair starts on Thursday. CNN reports:

Homeland Security Committee chairman Rep. Peter King, who is also a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, has been a vocal critic of the Obama administration’s handling of the September 11, 2012, attacks in Libya that killed four Americans including diplomat Chris Stevens. …

King said … that Petraeus is “an absolutely essential witness, maybe more than anybody else.”

“David Petraeus testifying has nothing to do with whether or not he’s still the CIA director, and I don’t see how the CIA can say he’s not going to testify,” King said. “I think his testimony is … certainly necessary … He was at the center of this and he has answers that only he has.”

If Petraeus does not testify as originally scheduled on Thursday, King said, “It should be very soon after that.”

When he does, if he tells the truth regardless of the consequences to the Obama administration or his own reputation, he will go a long way towards redeeming that reputation. If he shirks it, or endorses the administration’s lies yet again – great general though he is and deserving of all honor for his exceptional service to his country – his good name will be tarnished beyond redemption.

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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who glibly stated that she “accepted responsibility” for what happened in Benghazi, is reported to have “turned down an invitation to testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee next Thursday on the Benghazi attack”.

Note added 11/13/12. Go here to see what she will be doing that she considers more important than attending the inquiry into Benghazigate.

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*We were wrong. There is no certainty about this. See the comment below by Loretta Landrum Richey 11/13/12.

Can capitalism and individual freedom be preserved in a post-national world? Because the Republican Party stood for both, we supported it. We tolerated its deplorable weaknesses – chiefly its habit of being far too nice to the Left, and its incessant god-bothering.

The Constitutional Republic has now been so corrupted it cannot be purified. But it is still the best ever political idea. Its principles need to be re-established in a changed world.  

So let’s imagine it possible to remake the Republican Party better to suit the times; to turn the GOP into a GNP – a Grand New Party. What would it look like? About half of GOP membership at present is made up of Evangelical and “born again” Christians. In our ideal reconstitution, they are cut out. In their stead we would bring in a host of Libertarians. They would need to be Libertarians prepared to adopt for as long as necessary a sensible foreign policy and accept a strong defense. (Is this make-believe already becoming too farfetched?)

Certain issues would be left out of the Party platform: abortion and gay marriage, as prime instances. The law has to come in somewhere in the matter of abortion, but the issue has been confused by religious dogma and is best omitted from the agenda of the Great Abstract Gathering (GAG) called to rebuild the Republican Party.

Assuming that there will be national borders for a while yet, a new immigration policy would be given much thought. It would have to be realistic, enforceable, but humane; true to the melting-pot idea as engraved on the Statue of Liberty. The new Libertarian membership would be invited to contribute massively and energetically to this debate in particular.

To cement the alliance between secular conservatives and the new large Libertarian element, an instant consensus would be sought on free market principles, tending towards an extremist position on the rejection of “regulation” – the old Republican Party’s euphemism for government meddling with the market.

Comment and suggestions for the agenda of the GAG, outlines of desirable policies, opinions as to whether the Republican Party could be revived and returned to power, are invited.

Meanwhile here is an old prophecy that deplorably came true (hat-tip, our reader and commenter Frank):

In an article summarizing what is known about the events of 9/11/12 in Benghazi, Libya, where the US mission and CIA center were attacked and the ambassador and three other Americans killed, Mark Baisley raises not only the obvious questions but some new and awful possibilities. He writes at Townhall:

Ambassador Christopher Stevens had been found dead around 1:00AM by locals who sought to loot the embassy compound. Thinking he may yet be alive, they drove him to a medical center where doctors tried unsuccessfully to revive him from the effects of smoke asphyxiation.

So not necessarily “found dead’. If the doctors are telling the truth that they thought he might be revivable when he reached the hospital, it means that what we are seeing in the pictures is not the gross mishandling of a corpse, which would be bad enough, but the possible savage abuse of a living man, the high representative of the United States of America.

Having been subjected to weeks of YouTube video apologetics and obfuscation, the American electorate naturally has questions for the Commander-In-Chief.

Why was the site securityteam removed from Benghazi one month before the attack, in conflict with expert advice and requests?

Why would the Ambassador to Libya be meeting with the Consul General of Turkey?

Why was there no U.S. military response to an attack on American assets, including the assassination of a United States ambassador?

Why was America treated to such a hard-sell explanation of a YouTube video?

Why is the filmmaker in jail?

Why did the State Department produce a television ad about the YouTube video that was broadcast in Pakistan?

I can surmise three possible explanations, having received mountains of information and speculation …

Theory 1. There actually was reason to believe initially that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was motivated by anger at the YouTube video. CIA Director David Petraeus briefed members of Congress on September 14 that the YouTube video incited mob action against the Benghazi facility. Earlier on September 11, a mob had indeed stormed the U.S. Embassy in nearby Egypt. Americans heard little of that event because the Cairo embassy is built like a fortress and no Americans were hurt. The Washington Times reported that a witness in Benghazi “saw the militants gathering around 20 youths from nearby to chant against the film.” While the Administration has since learned the truth, they have simply been stalling the revelation of more accurate information in the face of an intense re-election campaign.

We discount this theory. It isn’t even worth considering. We know intelligence reached Washington very soon after the onslaught began that it was an attack  by a terrorist organization. And there are witness reports that there had been no protest demonstration.

Theory 2. Ambassador Stevens was set up for assassination. In this scenario, the Benghazi consulate is actually a front for the CIA annex which is gathering weapons left over from the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. Those weapons are being shipped to Turkey in order to supply Syrian rebels in their quest to effect the same fate for President Bashar al-Assad. Fox News has reported on the initial shipment to the port town of Iskenderun, Turkey, a scant 25 miles from the Syrian border.

The theory here is that the Turkish General Consul lured Stevens to Benghazi for a late-day meeting where they knew of the relatively small security force in place to protect him. The timing of September 11 was important for using the YouTube video as a ready-made cover story.

This is a new twist to the story. That Turkish consul, whom we had thought a mere walk-on in the drama, a visitor calling on normal diplomatic business, having a quiet meeting with Ambassador Stevens who then politely walked him out to the street to see him off, actually played a central part in the plot? If so, the meeting was what the Ambassador had gone to Benghazi for on that critical day, and the Turk got him there in order to have him killed.

The theory raises new questions. Why would the Turks want Ambassador Stevens killed? The Turks want to aid the Syrian rebels. The Turks would surely want arms to reach the rebels. If Ambassador Stevens  was organizing shipments of arms to Turkey to be passed on to the rebels, was he not a valuable asset to the Turks?

But wait. It gets worse.

The complicity of the Obama Administration is reflected in the lack of a military response and the hard campaigning of the YouTube video to the American people.

The Obama administration was actually complicit in the luring of their own Ambassador – one, let’s remember, who shared Obama’s sentimental attachment to Islam and the Arab world – to his atrocious death?

We have blamed Obama’s policies. We have blamed his refusal to see the evil in Islam, or to acknowledge that Islam is waging jihad against America; but we had not thought that Obama and his gang actually wanted Ambassador Stevens murdered. Why would they? But the facts stare us in the face: he was denied adequate protection. When he asked for more they gave him less.The truth is being covered up. So what is it they feel so desperately needs to be covered up?

The third theory has Obama less guilty but far more helplessly incompetent  and weak:

Theory 3. The Obama Administration and the Clinton State Department are incompetent actors who prefer dreams of a utopian world over the harsh reality of extremists who take joy in killing. They assume the best about our enemies and the worst about patriotic Americans. When realizing that our facilities and people were under attack, the community organizer found himself frighteningly in the position of Commander In Chief. Barack Obama brags about the killing of Osama Bin Laden on the campaign trail. But we have all heard the rumors that Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton presented the President with the OBL mission only after it was well underway. They reportedly excluded White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett who is rumored to have stood in the way of previous opportunities to get Bin Laden.

An Alinskyite community organizer suddenly has to give orders as Commander In Chief of the armed might of the USA. How could he be capable of it?  But he would not have needed to find himself in such a crisis if his policies, formulated at leisure over four years and shaped by a lifetime of leftist ideology, hadn’t led to the critical moment. He is as guilty as he would be if his active connivance at the massacre, an actual plot involving him and the Turkish consul, were to be uncovered.

The defeat of the United States by Muslim terrorists in Benghazi on 9/11/12 had been prepared as a defeat in Washington, D.C. over the last four years – the duration of this Obama presidency. It is not only unsurprising that it happened ( though it remains profoundly shocking), but something of the sort – a massacre of American diplomats and operatives in at least one Arab country – should even have been expected; because America’s Muslim enemies are at the wheel of the ship of state, guiding it on to the rocks.

The National Security apparatus of the United States is deeply penetrated and is being dangerously manipulated by a hostile foreign threat. This necessarily means that significant foreign policy decisions involving the Islamic world … will serve to advance the cause of our enemies.

This is from an article by John Guandolo at Breitbart:

Over the last several years, the presence of Muslim Brotherhood (MB) operatives working inside the federal government advising our senior leaders has been definitively documented …

See, for instance, our posts The State-whisperer, August 16, 2012, concerning Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s closest adviser, Muslim Brotherhood associate Huma Abedin; and Obama gang submits to America’s enemy, June 14, 2012.

The success of the MB’s influence operation from within our government is now manifesting itself with national and global implications for the security of America and its citizens.

In July of this year, the CIA hosted a 2-day training program at its headquarters in Langley, Virginia entitled “Countering Violent Extremism Workshop for the National Capitol Region.”

Present at this conference were local, state, and federal officials from nearly every law enforcement, military, and intelligence organization around the Washington Metropolitan area. In addition to the senior CIA, FBI, and DHS officials conducting the training, members of the Muslim community moderated and led the training throughout the 2-day program. Notable among these was Imam Mohammed Magid who participated in speaking about “Building Communities of Trust: A Local Example of a Partnership between the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) and Law Enforcement.”

How was Imam Magid vetted to speak at CIA Headquarters? And who vetted him?

The ADAMS Center is a Muslim Brotherhood front organization …  Imam Magid is the Executive Director of the ADAMS Center. He is also the President of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), the largest Muslim Brotherhood organization in the U.S. which was found to be a financial support entity for Hamas in the largest terrorism financing and Hamas trial in U.S. history (US v Holy Land Foundation, Dallas, 2008).

Having Magid advise and teach U.S. intelligence and law enforcement officials can only be aptly described as insane.

Insane, yes  – unless there is a terribly sane and sober plan by the administration itself to deliver the country to Islam.

According to officials at Langley who were willing to speak on the condition of anonymity, this is an outrage – but none of the leaders on the inside seem to understand the gravity of this threat.

To say the fox is in the hen house would be an understatement.

But the insanity does not end there. Imam Mohammed Magid continues to be a guest in the White House, works with the National Security Council, advises the Secretary of State, is on the DHS Homeland Security Advisory Working Group, and has received an award from the FBI. Magid continues to be treated by American leaders as if he is a friend, yet he is the leader of the largest MB front in the U.S. which financially supports the terrorist organization Hamas. …

When, over a long period of time, American leadership works side by side with and are advised by individuals and organizations who are proven to be hostile to the United States, it is no wonder the shooting at Ft Hood was called a “crime” by the FBI not an “act of terrorism” and why it was called “workplace violence” by Pentagon officials writing the after action reports. It is no wonder DHS and others in our government define the threat as “violent extremism” (which is actually a meaningless term) instead of calling it what it actually is – the Muslim Brotherhood’s jihadi movement in the United States which is a support network for terrorists.

And, it is no wonder that a military attack by Al Qaeda on an American consulate in Libya would be identified by the Obama Administration as the result of a YouTube video which was “offensive to Muslims” instead of what it truly was. Sadly, the amazing heroism of the men who battled over 200 Al Qaeda fighters for 6 hours is getting lost in the shuffle.

And it is no wonder that the attack took place, and no wonder that it was a victory for the Muslim Arab terrorist attackers.

Recently, Counter Terrorism Czar John Brennan scoffed at the idea the Muslim Brotherhood has penetrated the U.S. government. At what point will Mr. Brennan be held accountable for willfully failing to perform his duty and uphold his Oath to the Constitution. When will the other leaders such as the Secretary of State, the Director of Central Intelligence, the FBI Director, and the President be held to account for this egregious and treasonous behavior? …

One can only hope that a Romney Administration will take bold and decisive actions to purge the government of our enemies and those who willfully [or] unwittingly support them.

Right. And take measures to ensure that such penetration of government by an enemy can never happen again.

This poem, titled Mesopotamia 1917, by Rudyard Kipling, is quoted by Scott Johnson at PowerLine in connection with the tragedy of Benghazi, where Americans were left to die. We share Scott Johnson’s feeling for the aptness of it.

They shall not return to us, the resolute, the young,

The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:

But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,

Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?

 

They shall not return to us; the strong men coldly slain

In sight of help denied from day to day:

But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,

Are they too strong and wise to put away?

 

Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide–

Never while the bars of sunset hold.

But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,

Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?

 

Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour:

When the storm is ended shall we find

How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power

By the favour and contrivance of their kind?

 

Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,

Even while they make a show of fear,

Do they call upon their debtors, and take counsel with their friends,

To conform and re-establish each career?

 

Their lives cannot repay us – their death could not undo–

The shame that they have laid upon our race.

But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,

Shall we leave it unabated in its place?

In order to delay having to say anything of substance about the Benghazi disaster (see our many posts about it over the last month), Obama insists that we must await the findings of an official investigation he has launched: a  sober enquiry that will discover all the facts, patiently sift them, astutely analyse them, and thus be able at last to reveal the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Which will totally exonerate Obama. Not because the truth is in his favor, which we already know it is not, but because he can rely on the investigator he and the Secretary of State have appointed to find a “truth” that Obama and Hillary Clinton want him to find: that  all their decisions in the matter were wise, all their actions right, and their motives pure as the driven snow.

Why do we presume this outcome with such arrogant confidence? Because of what is known of the man he has appointed chief investigator.

Behold Thomas R. Pickering, who heartily approves and endorses Obama’s policy towards the Arab and Islamic worlds and probably helped to formulate it.

Of him, his remit and his views, Diana West writes at Townhall:

As we arrive at Election Day, some of the most crucial questions left unanswered about Benghazi are, in fact, the simplest. They are not “fog of war” questions. They are not questions rendered unanswerable by “conflicting intelligence.” They are questions that probe clear actions taking place not on the roof of a safe house under mortar fire, but inside the fortress-like, orderly and well-lit White House.

Who turned down requests for military relief for Americans under rocket and mortar fire? Who decided to suppress the fact that no protest preceded this attack on the U.S. consulate in Libya that claimed four American lives? Who ordered senior Obama administration officials to lie to the American people for two weeks by blaming a YouTube video for a “spontaneous” outbreak of violence that was, in fact, a coordinated terrorist assault?

President Obama declared he made his priorities about Benghazi clear “the minute I found out what was happening.” He said: “Number one, make sure that we are securing our personnel and doing whatever we need to.” If he issued an unexecuted order to this effect, there was a grievous breakdown in the chain of command that must be exposed. If, on the other hand, Barack Obama is lying, that must be exposed, too. It’s not a hard fact to find out.

But is Thomas Pickering, Obama’s choice to lead the Benghazi investigation, the proper person to search for it? On first glance, Pickering, a retired top diplomat and State Department official, sets off conflict-of-interest alarms for heading an investigation that must focus closely on the State Department. On closer inspection, however, so many red flags pop up around Pickering that his selection becomes another Benghazi. …

The man is a foreign policy establishment leftist. It’s not just that Pickering serves as chairman of the board of trustees of the International Crisis Group, a George Soros group that, for example, advocated engagement with the Shariah-supremacist Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Pickering has personally explored opening relations with Hamas; pushed peace talks with the Taliban; argued for getting rid of, or removing to the U.S., all tactical nuclear weapons in Europe … and promoted bilateral talks with Iran without preconditions. And speaking of Iran, Pickering sits on the boards of two pro-Tehran groups, the American Iranian Council and the National Iranian American Council. The Iranian connections are additionally disturbing since one Benghazi scenario to be explored is whether Iran was involved, possibly in retribution for U.S. support of anti-Assad forces (including jihadists) in Syria.

Pickering’s politics place him squarely inside the Obama foreign policy mainstream, but that’s not the proper point from which to investigate an Obama foreign policy fiasco. Indeed, Pickering has expressed support for Obama’s Libya policy, “where,” as he put it in March, “we play a major role behind the scenes and … incorporate many other people in the activities we did in Libya.”

Explaining the Libyan “experimentation” in “consultative leadership” that minimizes the U.S. military role, Pickering sounds as if he also endorsed the disastrous policy of relying on local jihadist militias for U.S. security.

And here is more about him from an article by Matthew Vadum at Front Page:

America is a seething hotbed of “Islamophobia,” filled with ignorant racist rubes who irrationally fear the benign Muslim religion, according tothe Obama administration’s lead investigator into the Benghazi atrocities. 

So said former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering in more polished, diplomatic language during an Oct. 23 panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. The talk was on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia,” a make-believe mental illness that Islamists would love to have listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Radical Islam’s stateside defenders frequently accuse anti-terrorism hawks of “McCarthyism,” hurling the epithet “Islamophobe” the same way American leftists use the word “racist” to shut down debate.

Pickering’s pontifications came two and a half weeks after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named him to head a State Department “Accountability Review Board” tasked with examining the circumstances surrounding the deaths on Sept. 11, 2012, the 11th anniversary of 9/11, of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith, and security personnel Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods at the U.S. mission in Benghazi, Libya.…

Pickering urged what might amount to a zero-tolerance policy against so-called Islamophobes in American society. “There are strong efforts as well that we must make to deal with opinion leaders who harbor these prejudices, who espouse them and spread them,” he said.

Such as tearing the First Amendment out of the Constitution?

Critics say Pickering is unfit to head any probe of what happened in Benghazi because he harbors sympathy for Islamism and is suspiciously cozy with Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

And so, since Obama and Hillary Clinton have picked to investigate the atrocity of Benghazi a man who firmly believes the policy that led to it is ideal, we can predict with certainty the outcome of his investigation.

It will be a whitewash.

Do not miss Mark Steyn’s column on Obama’s Big Government handling of Hurricane Sandy and the Benghazi crisis.

Each of Mark Steyn’s columns as it appears seems to be his best ever. This one is no exception.

Here’s a slice of it to taste:

In political terms, Hurricane Sandy and the Benghazi consulate debacle exemplify at home and abroad the fundamental unseriousness of the United States in the Obama era. In the days after Sandy hit, Barack Obama was generally agreed to have performed well. He had himself photographed in the White House Situation Room, nodding thoughtfully to bureaucrats (“John Brennan, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; Tony Blinken, National Security Advisor to the Vice President; David Agnew, Director for Intergovernmental Affairs”) and Tweeted it to his 3.2 million followers. He appeared in New Jersey wearing a bomber jacket rather than a suit to demonstrate that when the going gets tough the tough get out a monogrammed Air Force One bomber jacket. He announced that he’d instructed his officials to answer all calls within 15 minutes because in America “we leave nobody behind.” By doing all this, the president “shows” he “cares” – which is true in the sense that in Benghazi he was willing to leave the entire consulate staff behind, and nobody had their calls answered within seven hours, because presumably he didn’t care. So John Brennan, the Counterterrorism guy, and Tony Blinken, the National Security honcho, briefed the president on the stiff breeze, but on Sept. 11, 2012, when a little counterterrorism was called for, nobody bothered calling the Counterterrorism Security Group, the senior U.S. counterterrorism bureaucracy. …

No hurricane hit my county. Indeed, no hurricane hit New Hampshire. No hurricane hit “17 states,” the number of states supposedly “affected” by Sandy at its peak. A hurricane hit a few coastal counties of New Jersey, New York and a couple of other states, and that’s it. Everyone else had slightly windier-than-usual wind – and yet they were out of power for days … because of a decrepit and vulnerable above-the-ground electrical distribution system that ought to be a national embarrassment to any developed society. …

Our government is more expensive than any government in history – and we have nothing to show for it. … One Obama [stimulus] bill spent a little shy of a trillion dollars, and no one can point to a single thing it built. Washington … spends $188 million an hour that it doesn’t have … And yet, mysteriously, multitrillion-dollar Big Government Obama-style can’t do anything except sluice food stamps to the dependent class, lavish benefits and early retirement packages to the bureaucrats that service them, and so-called government “investment” to approved Obama cronies.

So you can have Big Government bigger (or, anyway, more expensive) than any government’s ever been, and the lights still go out in 17 states – because your president spent 6 trillion bucks, and all the country got was a lousy Air Force One bomber jacket for him to wear while posing for a Twitpic answering the phone with his concerned expression.

Even in those few parts of the Northeast that can legitimately claim to have been clobbered by Sandy, Big Government made it worse. Last week, Nanny Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, rivaled his own personal best for worst mayoral performance … This is a man who spends his days micromanaging the amount of soda New Yorkers are allowed to have in their beverage containers rather than, say, the amount of ocean New Yorkers are allowed to have in their subway system … Imagine if this preening buffoon had expended as much executive energy on flood protection for the electrical grid and transit system as he does on approved quantities of carbonated beverages. But that’s leadership 21st-century style: When the going gets tough, the tough ban trans fats.

Back in Benghazi, the president who looks so cool in a bomber jacket declined to answer his beleaguered diplomats’ calls for help – even though he had aircraft and Special Forces in the region. Too bad. He’s all jacket and no bombers. This, too, is an example of America’s uniquely profligate impotence. When something goes screwy at a ramshackle consulate halfway round the globe, very few governments have the technological capacity to watch it unfold in real time. Even fewer have deployable military assets only a couple of hours away. What is the point of unmanned drones, of military bases around the planet, of elite Special Forces trained to the peak of perfection if the president and the vast bloated federal bureaucracy cannot rouse themselves to action? What is the point of outspending Russia, Britain, France, China, Germany and every middle-rank military power combined if, when it matters, America cannot urge into the air one plane with a couple of dozen commandoes? … In Washington the head of the world’s biggest “counterterrorism” bureaucracy briefs the president on flood damage and downed trees. …

Barack Obama and Joe Biden won’t even try [to fix things] …  therefore a vote for Obama is a vote for the certainty of national collapse. Look at Lower Manhattan in the dark, and try to imagine what America might look like after the rest of the planet decides it no longer needs the dollar as global reserve currency. For four years, we have had a president who can spend everything but build nothing. Nothing but debt, dependency, and decay.

So vote the wind-bags out. Obama and Biden.

And treat yourself. Read it all.  It’s very funny and at the same time very serious – which, as its author says, the Obama administration is not. And the American electorate must decide whether to get serious in time to save itself.

In different ways the response to Hurricane Sandy and Benghazi exemplify the fundamental unseriousness of the superpower at twilight. Whether or not to get serious is the choice facing the electorate Tuesday. 

But let him keep the bomber jacket.